Wellington, March 9 NZPA - An early rise in Fletcher Building stocks helped the sharemarket start the week with a small gain.

Fletcher was up 10c in the first few minutes, before dropping back 5c, taking the stock to 520, after a 12c fall on Friday.

Contact Energy was up 5c early to 560 on top of a 4c gain on Friday, while among other leading shares Telecom lost 2c early to 237, following Friday's 7c loss.

Around 10.15am the benchmark NZSX-50 index was up 2.68 points to 2473.72, having lost 20.4 points on Friday.

Among other early risers, Hellaby Holdings gained 5c to 50, Sky City was up 4c to 260, The Warehouse rose 4c to 334, and Tourism Holdings added 3c to 50.

Stocks falling early included Freightways down 4c to 290, and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare down 3c to 335.

In the US on Friday (local time), stocks mostly limped into positive territory after a week in which they took a battering.

The Dow and S&P rebounded late in the day to end higher as surging oil prices lifted energy stocks and offset a sell-off in technology shares on bets that the slowing economy will sap consumer spending on gadgets.

Financial shares came off their lows after the Wall Street Journal reported that Lloyds Banking Group and the British government had agreed on an asset protection scheme, easing concerns about frail capital positions at global banks.

During the session, the Dow and S&P touched fresh 12-year lows.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.5 percent to 6626.94, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index inched up just 0.1 percent to 683.38, while the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.4 percent to 1293.85.

It was the fourth week of declines for all the indexes, with the Dow losing 6.2 percent, the S&P 500 sliding 7 percent, and the Nasdaq dropping 6.1 percent.

NZPA WGT Reuters mjd dj